Happy New Year! Last year turned out to be a far quieter year than I had anticipated. The two projects I worked on both ended up taking longer than expected to reach fruition. Last I heard, the team at Mechamania are making great progress with Exoleap – albeit without me, since I have been chipping away at game #2 for the past six months. It’s been wonderful to now see the seeds of the idea…

Feature creep is common in game development. It’s why you can do almost anything you want in Read Dead Redemption 2. And it’s why Duke Nukem Forever took twelve years to develop. On the whole, I believe, feature creep doesn’t make games better. Do the thousands upon thousands of collectibles in a modern Assassin’s Creed game really make for a better experience? Or are they unnecessary busy work for both players and developers? Since I…

My friends at Mechamania have finally revealed what they (and I) have been working on: Exoleap, a groundbreaking virtual reality experience. If you think the trailer looks cool, wait until you’ve had a chance to experience the ride – it is out of this world! The experience is powered by Motor, the engine that the team and I have been working on for the past year and a half. Bringing Motor up to the level of…

With the new year now firmly upon us, I’d like to update you on what’s in store for Codalyn in 2018. Mechamania Team Up I have teamed up with Mechamania on two interconnected projects. The first project we are collaborating on is the development of Motor, a new lean-and-mean game engine that will power upcoming Codalyn games and the virtual reality experience that Mechamania is creating. Development on Motor actually already started back in March, but we are…

Good day, Commander. Your immediate attention is needed! Stable Orbit 1.0 “Zenith” is out today! Green Man Gaming, my publishing partner, and I are very happy to now be handing this game over to you, the players. We hope you’ll create space stations that are amazing and weird in ways that we could not have imagined. Build the station of your dreams and find ways to survive those meteor showers and CBM failures. The mission…

The word is out, the news is official: Stable Orbit “1.0” launches on September 27th! What a journey it has been! Way back in the summer of 2013, I spent a good portion of my train commutes to and from Nixxes Software putting together a little prototype called “Station”, which let you connect blue spheres to white capsules that if you squinted really hard somewhat resembled the modules of space station. Where most of my prototypes…

The last couple of days I’ve been hacking away at a feature that we haven’t discussed before, but I believe is very important to the feel of the game: visible damage to modules. I’ve long thought about how to approach this particular feat, since I lack the skills required to convincingly model destruction damage (and neither have the budget to commission someone to model and texture such damage for me). I do, however, know a thing…

The developer branch of Stable Orbit is now live! From now until the launch of the full game later this year, the developer branch will grant you unfettered access to the latest and greatest new features as they are being developed. What this means is that you’ll get to try the new additions, such as the new pressurized / unpressurized mechanic, at an early stage. Some times, that may mean the feature is broken or not working…

Last Saturday, I sat down to work out my plan for the remainder of Stable Orbit’s development. First data point: the release date we want to hit. As an indie, even with a publisher, there is no point going up against the likes of, say, Call of Duty: WWII. That’s one race we’d never win, given that they are probably spending more on CoD-branded golf balls than the entire budget of Stable Orbit. And golf…